Thursday, 23 October 2014

The opening scene: Bolsheviks in the distance, Whites nearest the camera. Twelve units each, Reds with a unit of armour, Whites with a unit of field artillery.

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First shot! White artillery knocks out Red armour. What an opener!﻿

Red commander had to be consoled with a jelly baby. See ! The Bolsheviks do eat babies !!

One of the built up areas becomes the focus of heavy fighting, with each side attempting to benefit from the points advantages to be gained from defending a built up zone. This focal point becomes a killing zone, with the fortunes of war in the Whites' favour.

Above: this blurred aerial photograph shows the Bolshevik command unit realising that the game is up - they only command an m/g unit. Shortly after the photgraph was taken, the Red machine gunners fell.

Endstate. The Whites hold the field, though sorely depleted.

I can't sign off this post without mentioning the jihadi Islamist terror attack in Ottawa. The murder of Cpl. Cirillo at Canada's National War Memorial was a foul attack not just on Canada but on the West as a whole. The only satisfaction to be gained is that it was the Serjeant at Arms, Kevin Vickers, who killed the terrorist. How fitting that someone charged with the defence of a Parliament - that core institution of democracy - should have carried out his duty so well. ﻿

Sunday, 19 October 2014

Karl Marx may also have approved of it, but I have no intention of entering into arcane debate about whether the 'younger Marx' would have done so more, or less, than the 'older Marx'. However, Marx's son-in-law, Paul Lafargue, would not. Some years ago my brother-in-law, Ken MacLeod, bought me a copy of Lafargue's opus magnus, The Right to be Lazy, and gave it to me with the comment that Lafargue seemed to have taken his own advice to heart and wrote nothing else but his little peon to idleness. I, on the other hand, have not been able to take the Froggie socialist's advice these past months, as in the new, fresh, globalised world of higher education, 'LABOUR IS GLORIOUS'. Well, actually, it's been more of a case that I have been kept from modelling/toy soldierly things by the first two thirds of the Petainist slogan, Travail, Famille, Patrie. Mind you, I suppose I was increasingly stressed as the United Kingdom hung, for a tense week or so, on the apparent abyss, while the Scots (or, at least, those of them in Scotland, if not in the UK), decided on how to vote with regard to the end, or the continuation, of the UK. Happily (from this blog's perspective) it was UK OK. But, on with the updates...

Firstly, I was able to paint up the latest unit for my Maltovia vs Lovitznia conflict. The new regiment, in French style, can be seen on manouevres:

It looks as if it's the end of a long, hard exercise for these chaps.

Secondly, after many a mishap, I finally managed to complete the Roden offering of the Albatros II:

I won't bore you with all the horrors associated with this kit bash, but to give you the flavour of things - having fixed the wings, I promptly dropped a rather heavy bottle of wash onto the thing, smashing three struts...

But, all is complete, although I have put away another Albatros model that I had thought might make a twin.

Quotation of the moment

'In a sense, nothing in life is planned - or everything is - because in the dance every step is ultimately the corollary of the step before; the consequence of being the kind of person one chances to be.'

Anthony Powell, The Acceptance World (A Dance to the Music of Time), 1955.

Cpt. Front

About Me

New Men-At-Arms

Not out until February 2018, but order your copy early - you know it makes sense!

NOW IN PAPERBACK!!!

The Home Guard - 'This is likely to be the standard reference book on the subject for many years to come'; Bernard Lowry, Fortress Study Group.

A Vanished Ideology Essays on the Jewish Communist Movement in the English-Speaking World

Yiddish-speaking, English-speaking, Jews in the Communist movement. With a chapter on British Jews, ethnicity and class, by Al Front.

When Jews had a place on the Left.

The Labour Party is sunk in a mess of anti-Semitism, but it was not always thus:

Alf R. Ont on the wireless

Click on the image and scroll to 01:05:23 for the dulcet tones of Mr Ont, talking about women in the Home Guard.

Women in the Home Guard

From The Conversation, 5th February, 2016. Active, patriotic British women to the fore...

NEW BIOGRAPHY of 'FLYING' FAY TAYLOUR

277 pages of thrills and spills. 'Fanatical Fay Taylour', the greatest woman motor sports champion yet. A speed fiend on race tracks across the world, and a political activist who was banned from the USA, and interned in the UK. Member of the ultra-right underground in 1940s London and Dublin, later an Irish republican and supporter of Castro. Click image for a FREE ,yes, FREE, Pdf version provided by the University of Warwick.

Evolution and change in politics

A review of a new history of what was once a notable element of political allegiance among the Jewish diaspora. (Clink on the image for free link).

Germany calling...

The woman who recruited 'Lord Haw Haw' to the Berlin wireless. Socialist, Bolshevik, National Socialist, enemy broadcaster. (From The Historian 119; click on image for Pdf)

BBC Radio 4: Red Clydeside, Decoy Defences and Invasion panic

More Radio 4 'Making History' rambling - from 20th November 2012 (click on the image for link)

'The Land of My Dreams'

British Great War literary combatants and their writing about the war and home. A Pdf of an article from Cultural & Social History, vol. 8, no: 2, June 2011. (Click on image for link).

British Jews & the Communist Party of Great Britain

More reading for the VBCW enthusiast, not to mention the discerning reader (click on image for link). From Socialist History, vol.12, no: 41, September 2012

BBC Radio 4: Speed, women, and fascism

Listen to my dulcet tones, talking about 'Flying' Fay Taylour on BBC Radio 4's Making History (click on the image for link)

'Fay Taylour: a dangerous woman in sport and politics'

A must for the VBCW gamer - the most successful woman motor sport ace ever and a fascist. Click on image for journal link, an open access Pdf will eventually be available.

The Armourer magazine, March/April 2012

The true daughters of Britannia who joined the Home Guard

Political internment without trial, 1940 style

Fascists, nazis, and the IRA interned. Click on image for back issue of Britain At War, issue 46, Feb 2011

George Blake, literary Scot in the Great War

The Great War fiction of the veteran, George Blake - from Cencrastus no:67. Out of print, but I can send a photocopy, if you wish.

For the VBCW war gamer

In History Scotland, March/April 2011; click on image for free Pdf.

Fifth Column panic!

Buy a back issue - all that is left

The incomparable generation of 1914

from The Historian no:110, Summer 2011, magazine of The Historical Association; click on image for Pdf.

BBC Radio 4: Stand By the King!

Listen to my words of historical wisdom about the BUF in Norfolk on Radio 4's 'Making History'. Click on image for link.

One I did earlier...

Musso and the RSI

Fascism in Scotland

From the Scottish Historical Review, volume 87 (2) 2008 (click on the image for Pdf link)

Another Home Guard one...

A 50 page booklet, now out of print, but available as a pdf from Warwick University - click on the image for the link.